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The happy marriage…
…of two great English herds at Thistle Hill. TDA 31 is an embryo heifer from Goldings Farm in Cornwall and Ashott Barton Farm in Somerset. 31 is Exhibit A in what we hoped to achieve with our pursuit of pure traditional English Devon genetics. We would be hard-pressed to find some way to improve her. The dam was Goldings Norah who we discovered in Ivan Rowe’s pastures at Lands End. Ivan told told us to select any cow we wanted from his herd of more than 100 Devon. He’d wait for us back at the house. Wooz and I trudged back and forth in the rain all afternoon before settling…
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Free at last…
…with everyone in the family safely vaccinated, I was finally able to escape my senior residence for the first time in almost exactly a year. Naturally it was this year’s calf crop that interested me most. They’re five months old now and a rewarding bunch of prospects. Church’s favorite is THF 3…the daughter of TDA Cashtiller 4 and our Essington bull. She’s the latest in our line of pure traditional English calves. I was taken by this Bribery heifer..a combination of four great English herds. She’s two-years old…and perhaps in-calf. And she was the last mating Wooz and Church selected on our final visit to England. We were in agreement…
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Parade of bulls…
…TDA Ransom…a Wooz favorite maybe because his mama was Goldings Snowdrop…selected by her when the “wise old men” of the partnership were favoring others. She called him “Handsome Ransom”…and saw something in him even in his awkward teenage years. He’s come into his own now though Wooz is no longer with us to say I told you so. (That wouldn’t be like her anyway!) We keep eight to ten bulls in the same pasture. Why is it when they reach their prime they invariably stand apart and spend most of the day posing? Ransom’s sire is the great Millennium Falcon. David
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Passing of a giant…
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This ain’t Kansas…
So what’s a pure English Devon bull doing in Virginia? He’s the result of the last mating Wooz designed on our final trip to southwest England a few years ago. The dam comes from the famous Tulip line…renowned all over the island. The sire the equally-renowned Cutcombe bull named Jaunty. The resulting embryos from the mating were flown to Thistle Hill for calving. This young guy is now 8.5 months old and destined for great things! David
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English update….
The bull calf on the left is out of a Tulip dam, a line that goes back as far as there have been herd books in Britain…about 170 years. He’s definitely a “comer”; love his head and muzzle! The heifer on the right is out of Bribery. Church spotted her dam on his first trip to England. Ten years earlier I fell for her grandmother but it took young Church to sweet-talk breeder Shiamala Comer into releasing the genetics. We’re often asked how we judge purity. Check the muzzles on these two calves. Flesh toned…clear of any spots. It also helps to know your registrar. In years past, our in-house…
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By way of explanation….
….we haven’t been able to enjoy our fall pastures much….or update this blog….for quite a while. So below is a recent picture by our manager, Duane Ard, and now the explanation. A month ago, Wooz fell on our gravel road and broke her hip. A routine x-ray then revealed a small mass in her lung. So our hours have been filled with frequent trips to the University of Virginia hospital (90 minutes away), where Wooz first underwent a complete hip replacement, then a Gamma knife treatment to clear up several brain lesions and finally the start of chemo for her lung. There’s still a long road to go, but she is…
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Coping with the cold….
….hasn’t quite been the proverbial “piece of cake”. Wooz has done pretty well and of course I’m inside the tractor. Here she checks our first-calf heifers to see how they withstood below zero temperatures the night before. When it gets this cold we do relent and give the young ladies some grain….not only to stay warm but help with their first re-breeding. If this looks like pretty meager fare, it is; less than two pounds per cow. (Wooz gets a little more) They’re also getting high quality alfalfa-mix hay and we believe that helps them through the cold, too.
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Where to begin….
….well, to coin a phrase, “start at the beginning”. Posting has been non-existent for almost a month, but not because there’s been nothing to report. It’s breeding season and Wooz here discusses strategy with our vet, Dr. Monica O’Brien. AI comes first, and we’re using two sires across some of our best cows: Traditional Devon’s Falcon (our English bull) and Rotokawa 243, who has given us some wonderful calves in the past. After that, came sorting the herd into groups….getting the right bulls with the right females. In all, we’ll be using four bulls this time: Jackpot and U2 plus limited use of two Traditional Devon bulls, a son of…
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Parting is sweet sorrow…
…whenever it comes time to ship our animals. Wooz is always an unwilling partner in that part of our business. Here Michael Jones of Deerfield, Ohio reviews the seven animals waiting shipment to his Tierra Verde Farms. They’re at the vets, getting their travel papers. Mike selected a veteran bred cow with a heifer calf at her side, three young heifers and two steers. He tells us his grass fed beef business has outpaced his current supply so he needs both more females and some “ready” steers. Wooz insists on violating a cardinal rule of the cattle business: never name your animals. With anywhere from 60 to 80 critters on…